Tackling tensions and ambivalences: Armenian girls' diasporic identities in Russia

Abstract

Research on diasporic youth identities in the British and American context has stressed hybridity, heterogeneity and multiplicity. This paper draws upon ethnographic research undertaken with Armenian girls to explore some of the tensions and ambivalences of negotiating diasporic identities in the Russian context. Diasporic identities are constructed through gender, and this paper illustrates how research participants negotiate their identities in relation to both belonging to the Armenian community and wider Russian society. At the same time, this paper examines how research participants draw differently on diasporic identifications in order to overcome tensions and ambivalences in their everyday lives. The paper shows that research participants are not inclined to reject their cultural roots in favor of new hybrid identities, but are able to recognize and appropriate different cultures in their identity negotiations.

Keywords:

• diasporic youth identities
• gender
• ethnicity
• Armenian
• Russia

Notes

In the subsequent discussion, interview participants are referred to by their pseudonyms (that is, their changed given names) and age. Here the pseudonyms are traditional Armenian first names. The real first names of research participants were often Russian.

During my fieldwork, I was never able to determine exactly how much research participants' parents earned and therefore my definition of “class” is rather a loose definition. Yet, my close contact with research participants enabled me to understand the socio-economic differences between research participants according to the ways they spent their spare time, the types of clothes they wore, the types of mobile phones they had and whether they talked about going on holidays abroad.

Source: The official Russian website on the 2002 population census, available at: <http://www.perepis2002.ru>, accessed 12 December 2006.

Source: Krasnodar krai Committee of State Statistics. Natsional'nyi sostav i vladenie yazykami, grazhdanstvo. Itogi vserossiiskoi perepisi naseleniia 2002 goda po Krasnodarskomu Kraiu, Tom 4, Krasnodar, 2005.

The knowledge of traditional Armenian gender roles has been obtained from Ishkanian, “Armenians;” Shakhnazarian, Gendernye Problemy Armian Nagorno Karabakha (Sovremmennyi Period); Ter-Sarkisiants, Armiane: Istoriia i Etnokul'turnye Traditsii.

In my conversations, research participants as well as parents and other adults talked about the importance of the family in Armenian culture. According to Ishkanian (267), family is central in Armenian culture due to Armenia's absence of history as an independent state. In the absence of statehood, the concept of “nation-as-family” evolved in Armenian society.

Shakhnazarian (58). Although Shakhnazarian's argument relates to Armenian culture in Nagorno Karabakh, my fieldwork experience suggests this is a widespread perception amongst Armenians in Krasnodar too.

For example, the studies on British South Asians by Dwyer (“Contradictions of Community” 53–68; “Contested Identities” 50–65); and Brah; the study on Danish Asians by Mørck; and the studies on Scottish Pakistanis by Qureshi; Qureshi and Moores (207–26).

The word Russian (rossiiskii) here is a civic term pertaining to Russian culture rather than an ethnic term.

Tolman and Higgins show that parents in general have a two-fold understanding in relation to their daughters – that of a “good girl” and a “bad girl.” While the “good girl” is passive and a threatened sexual object, the “bad girl” is an active, desiring sexual agent.

Both Tebbut and Harris explore the dynamics of gossiping in different cultural settings and times and have come to very similar conclusions. Tebbutt examines the issue of gossip in working-class English neighborhoods from the late nineteenth through to the mid-twentieth centuries and Harris writes about the power of gossip to control gender relations in Tajikistan.

Source: Krasnodar krai Committee of State Statistics.

From puberty, Armenian children are taught that sex is a private act between two people and that it is a dangerous act. According to traditional Armenian norms, sex is only sanctified by marriage (Ishkanian 271).